April 25, 2017

Oops… during a presentation to a high school audience last week, I let it slip that one of my greatest environmental frustrations is bottled water.

Why bottled water? Because:

Most bottled water is not natural spring water, but merely filtered tap water.

Most bottled water is not local; it’s trucked long distances and has a huge transportation footprint.

The Maritimes have plenty of clean, clear water; surely it’s the last thing we should be sending our money out-of-province for!

Most empty water bottles are not recycled; instead, they end up in landfills, roadsides or waterways. A recent study warned that the world’s oceans may contain more plastic than fish by 2050. Yuck!

The water bottles that are recycled don’t come back as bottles; they’re ‘downcycled’ into products like carpet, which eventually end up in a landfill anyway.

You can make a difference, with one simple choice: seek out a tap or fountain, and, whenever possible, just say no to bottled water. On the tree of environmental solutions, it’s hard to find lower hanging fruit.